Food show
March 4th, 2020 — March 29th, 2020
Opening Reception: Wednesday, March 4th, 6pm-8pm
131 Chrystie Street, New York, NY 10002
Gallery Hours: Thursday-Sunday 1pm-8pm
GALLERY IS TEMPORARILY CLOSED (COVID-19)
Visit the artworks online via RECTANGLE
(rectangle.art)
SFA Projects is donating our overhead costs in support of our artists and collectors. Visit rectangle.art to purchase the artwork in this exhibition, and use discount code SupportArt40 to receive an immediate 40% discount on all artworks.
Artists will receive their full commission on all purchases.
SFA Projects is proud to present FOOD SHOW, a group exhibition curated by Chantal Lee and Jeffrey Morabito. FOOD SHOW explores the relationship between people and food as it exists in the cultural imagination. The exhibition looks at how food participates as a subject today, capable of expressing personal history, cultural mythology, and collective experience; describing a still-fertile ground for the tradition of still-life.
Artists include Izzy Barber, Jon Chonko, Jennifer Coates, Martin Dull, Paul Gagner, Judy Glantzman, Alex Kanevsky, Maria Liebana, Jeffrey Morabito, Joshua Nierodzinski, Aoife Pacheco, Andrew Cornell Robinson, Ivan Lamberts Samuels and Crys Yin.
Since ancient times, food has measured human well-being. Across cultures, families sat down communally to eat food that corresponded with the changing seasons and that were harvested or hunted by themselves or their neighbors. What was once a slow interaction with food has been replaced by a ménage of seasons, sourced from near and distant landscapes, moving through us at the speed of light. Our food experiences today are largely brought to us anonymously by corporations that mobilize the gentrification of our homes, the food market, and with what we eat and how.
Nevertheless, food has endured as a symbol of experience. Whether it is the forbidden fruit on the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the apple indicating immoral indulgence of pleasure. Or Wong Kar Wai’s repeating scenes of noodle stalls in In the Mood for Love, motifs suggesting loneliness and longing. Or the Greek mythological figure of Tantalus, who is punished to forever go thirsty and hungry, despite standing in a pool of water and almost within reach of a fruit tree (the origin of the word “tantalize”). In art, food has been used as a symbol to express not only our relationships to one another, but our human nature, exposing our dreams and fears, and giving voice to our desires.
FOOD SHOW is equally inspired by more recent food experiences in art and culture, particularly Gordon Matta Clark’s artist-run restaurant, FOOD, from SoHo in the 1970s; and the installation works of Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija. For FOOD, artists such as Donald Judd, Robert Rauschenberg, Philip Glass, and John Cage created meals, washed dishes, and ate at the restaurant, serving to other artist-diners who met to discuss art. The cooking and food were seen as both a performance art and a visual art, with the food “painting” the table. As well, Rirkrit Tiravanija’s works are fundamentally about bringing people together, and so created site-specific structured spaces where he cooked and served food to his gallery visitors.
Izzy Barber is from Gowanus, Brooklyn. A three-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant, Barber received her MFA from the New York Studio School in 2017 and a Bachelor’s Degree in Studio Arts and Human Rights from Bard College in May 2011. She currently lives and works in New York.
Jon Matthew Chonko is best known for Scanwiches, an ongoing series of digital images created using a flatbed scanner and homemade or store-bought sandwiches. Jon Matthew’s work seeks to capture, document, and display food out of its traditional context encouraging the viewer to consider their personal relationship with cuisine, culture, identity, and nostalgia. Jon Matthew’s work incorporates themes of repetition, comparison, and collection to reinforce both the variety between and shared qualities of the beloved handheld food. Jon Matthew believes in the taxonomic theory of sandwich classification and considers a hot dog a sandwich.
In the proliferation of Jennifer Coates psychedelic paintings she often questions contemporary issues of agricultural food production, addressing the grotesque nature of manufactured food through her mastery of acrylic paint. Her painting techniques mirror the synthetic textures and colors of mass-produced nostalgia-filled foods to reveal a sophisticated understanding of abstract and biomorphic painting. While Coates work appears haphazard and to laud the unruly, the anti-logic, and the messy, it is fundamentally indebted to her commitment to grid-like structures, patterns, and repetition. She attempts to offer a taste of the sublime through her command over paint, bringing forward a radiant and transcendent aura. Her work is rooted in form which relates to her interest in the human and cultural attraction to certain shapes and behaviors. In doing so she explores the relationship between form, ancient rituals, and cultural aesthetic significance. Coates has recently displayed work in solo exhibitions at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Arts & Leisure in New York, Valentine Gallery in Queens, Tillou + Feigen in New York, and Kevin Bruk Gallery in Miami. Selected group exhibitions have been hosted at Safe Gallery in Brooklyn, Lorimoto in Queens, Ortega y Gasset Projects in Brooklyn, Airlock Gallery in San Marco, California, Zurcher Gallery and High Noon Gallery in New York. Coates has engaged in curatorial projects at Ortega y Gasset in Brooklyn and Jeff Bailey Gallery in Hudson, New York.
Martin Dull is a mixed media artist who studied at Pratt Institute, Marywood University, and the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture where, in 2015, he received his MFA. He was the 2015 recipient of the Peter Rippon/Royal Academy European Travel Grant, 2016 artist in residence at the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation, 2017/18 Trestle Open Studio Resident and 2020 NYSS Dumbo Sculpture Studio Resident. He has been a guest speaker and critic at several institutions including the New York Studio School, Pratt Institute, Fordham University, and Hunter College, has co-curated exhibitions throughout the New York metropolitan area, and is co-founder of the curatorial collaborative JMN Artists. Dull’s artwork has been included in both group and solo exhibitions throughout the United States, most notably John Davis Gallery, Hudson, NY, and M David & Co, Brooklyn, NY. He is currently represented by M David & Co in Brooklyn, NY.
Paul Gagner is painter and sculptor living in Brooklyn, NY. He holds a B.F.A from the School of Visual Arts as well as an M.F.A. from the City University of New York at Brooklyn College. Paul’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including Katharine Mulherin in Toronto, The Community in Paris, Hashimoto Contemporary in San Francisco, Halsey McKay gallery in East Hampton, Allen & Eldridge in New York City, and the Sheila & Richard Riggs Leidy Galleries at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. He’s been featured in the art blog Hyperallergic and Art21 magazine. Most recently, he was featured on the cover and in an interview for the print magazine, Art Maze Magazine.
Judy Glantzman was born in Long Island, NY in 1956 and graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1978. She began exhibiting in the early 1980’s in the East Village art scene, at Civilian Warfare and Gracie Mansion. She followed with shows at BlumHelman and Hirschl & Adler Modern in the 1990’s and at Betty Cuningham Gallery for the past eight years. She had a 30 year retrospective at Dactyl Foundation in spring 2009. Glantzman was a Painting instructor at the Rhode Island School of Design and part of the drawing falculty at the New York Studio School. Glantzman’s work can be seen in numerous public collections, including the Whitney Art Museum, New York, NY; Grey Art Gallery, New York, NY; the Phoenix Art Museum, Phoenix, AZ; The Progressive Collection, Cleveland, OH; and the Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa, FL. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants, most notably the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, 2001; the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation Grant, 1997; the New York Foundation for the Arts Grant, 1994; and the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, 1992. Glantzman lives and works in New York, NY.
Alex Kanevsky is an American-Lithuanian artist whose figurative paintings display dynamism, movement, and spatial compression, captured by short, gestural brushstrokes. Born in 1963 in Rostvo-na-Donu, Russia, he studied theoretical mathematics at Vilnius University in Lithuania before moving to the United States in the 1980s. He enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1989 to foster his creativity. He currently lives and works in New Hamsphire.
Maria Liebana is a first-generation Latinx artist based in Queens. Her artistic practice is shaped by her liminal ethnic status, underground cultures, and conventional sexist attitudes toward kitsch. Liebana holds a BFA in Art and Design Education from Pratt Institute and an MFA in Studio Art from Maine College of Art. She has exhibited at Field Projects, Local Project Art Space, Trestle Contemporary Art Gallery, Ground Floor Gallery, and Helen Day Art Center. She attended Vermont Studio Center and Pickwick Independent Press in Portland, Maine. She is a 2018 and 2020 Queens Council on the Arts New Works Grant Artist recipient.
Jeffrey Morabito, being half Hong Kong-ese and half Italian, spent his early years traveling between New York and Hong Kong. He returned to Asia in 2006, to apprentice with a calligraphy master in Seoul, South Korea. He then spent six years in Beijing, beginning with a Red Gate Gallery Residency, in 2009, teaching at Capital Normal University. Morabito has exhibited in “Art Beijing;” International Art Fair and Matthius Kupper Gallery, Beijing, China; N-Space and Jay Gallery Seoul, South Korea; Rosenfeld Gallery Philadelphia; Projektraum Knut Osper, Cologne, Germany; and in Eric Firestone Loft, 1 GAP and SFA Projects in New York.
Joshua Nierodzinski is an artist, curator, and organizer. His paintings focus on rituals of eating, the historical symbolism of food, and the psychosocial dynamics of dining. As a co-founder HEKLER, an artist-run platform focused on hospitality and conflict, he collaborates with artists, activists, writers and curators to produce experiences that are welcoming and educational in order to create a living archive and solidarity network. Joshua works as the Assistant Director of Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project.
Aoife Mary Pacheco is a ceramic artist based in Brooklyn, N.Y., working in mid-fire stoneware and porcelain clays. Aoife began pottering at the age of 7 and continued, eventually studying fine art at Oberlin College and at the University of Alicante, Spain. Aoife’s functional and sculptural pottery strives to highlight the value of community in a culture that idolizes efficiency. Elevating the importance of our time together and the process of making, eating, and cleaning up.
Andrew Cornell Robinson (b. 1968 Camden, NJ) is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily with ceramic sculpture, painting and works on paper. After studying ceramics and sculpture in Baltimore, Maryland, Glasgow, Scotland, and New York City, he worked a number of years in Manhattan as a designer. He is the founder of the Arts and Crafts Research Studio, and a member of the faculty at Parsons School of Design. His work is in public and private collections and has been presented at the Ross Art Museum, the Bruce Museum, the Crafts Council of the United Kingdom, as well as galleries and art fairs in United States and residencies here and abroad. He lives and works in New York City.
Ivan Lambert Samuels’ focus in clay is to create functional work on the pottery wheel. For 15 years, he has been committed to the medium of clay and ceramics. Samuels studied pottery in Boston, MA at the Mudflat Clay School. He continues to teach pottery classes and workshops to adults and youth populations in clay studios in New York City. He uses various clay bodies to create pottery but enjoys using brown stoneware the most. He loves the sandy grog in the brown stoneware that gives an earthy ceramic finish once kiln fired. Functional pottery has inspired art, crafts, and customs in civilizations around the globe. His love for nature and the ocean inspires some of the earth tones and bright glazes he uses in his functional pottery work.
Crys Yin is an artist based in New York. Her paintings and sculptures deal with cultural misconnections and embracing the comedic side of personal experiences. She has exhibited at FLAG Art Foundation, Adam Baumgold Gallery, Fisher Parrish, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Garis & Hahn, amongst others. Yin has also participated in residencies with Shandaken Paint School, The Lighthouse Works, ProjectArt, ACRE, Ox-Bow, and Lower East Side Printshop. She is a 2019-2020 fellow with A.I.R. in Brooklyn, New York.